


and if the lights are all down

by homeschoolvaledictorian



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 13:53:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6987676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homeschoolvaledictorian/pseuds/homeschoolvaledictorian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is blind. Love is deaf. Love is cruel, and ruthless, and cold. That has never stopped love. </p><p>Drabbles on Illumi and Killua's relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and if the lights are all down

The birth is an easy one. Milluki’s birth, in Illumi’s dimmer five-year-old memory, had had complications. Messy, but not a problem for a family as bloodsoaked as the Zoldycks. In contrast, Killua’s birth is as clean as a birth can be. The freshly swaddled baby squirms in Kikyo’s arms, wide blue eyes already falling shut. Kikyo is fingering a tuft of the baby’s white hair. “Look,” she whispers, almost reverently. “Silva.”

At ten years old, Illumi understands little of Nen, but he knows this: he has black hair. Milluki has black hair. This baby—christened Killua, killer—has white hair, like his father and his grandfather. This is what his parents were waiting for. Kikyo is smiling like she can’t quite believe it, stroking the baby’s hair with a possessive hand. Silva stands by, something like pride on his face. The baby sleeps on, oblivious to everything white hair means.

Illumi allows himself a brief moment of wonder. Unable to comprehend the surrounding unknown, and yet the baby sleeps, untroubled. Falling into the world for the first time, and setting aside all shock, all fear and suspicion, to fall into sleep. If the concept of sleep wasn’t understood, if the baby didn’t know the difference between states of consciousness and unconsciousness, perhaps that second fall felt like death.

But death, then, was no more familiar a concept than sleep. That would change; death was a subject every Zoldyck was intimately familiar with, and Killua was certainly no exception. The baby in his mother’s arms would soon be subjected to the first stage of an intense training regime that would last anywhere from fifteen to twenty years. Illumi imagines the child, a proficient young killer, gutting a dirty politician with a flick of the fingertips, garroting a high-level mafia member in the back of a bar. He tries to picture the face, but all he can see is shadowy blurs under white hair. Illumi closes his eyes and stops imagining.

The baby will know sleep, and death, and suffering too, soon enough. Illumi may only barely remember Milluki’s birth, but his own training is all too vividly memorable.

**Author's Note:**

> Frequent short updates.


End file.
